


Grace Monroe is a Liar (And Why That’s a Good Thing)

by ArgentDandelion



Category: Infinity Train (Cartoon)
Genre: Analysis, Character Analysis, Character Study, Cognitive Dissonance, Deception, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Lies, Manipulation, Mentioned Hazel, Mentioned Jesse Cosay, Meta, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:48:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26598601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArgentDandelion/pseuds/ArgentDandelion
Summary: Covers the depths of Grace Monroe being a liar, deceiver, and manipulator, and explains how the particular mannerisms and extremes of her deceptions allowed her to change for the better.
Relationships: Hazel & Grace Monroe (Infinity Train)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 12





	Grace Monroe is a Liar (And Why That’s a Good Thing)

**Author's Note:**

> **Note: this article does not sufficiently weigh Simon’s bad behaviors in Episode 11, “The New Apex”. This article has been kept unmodified for posterity.**

## Grace Analysis

Late in Season 3, Simon often brings up Grace’s lying with scorn. Grace is more thna a liar, though: she’s an expert manipulator, deceiving and manipulating others frequently, and often impulsively or effortlessly. And yet, the very thing that made Grace a less trustworthy person than Simon is what allowed her to change for the better. Firstly, Grace is a plain liar: her sheer finesse and frequency of lying make her untrustworthy at Season 3’s start.She’s precociously good at manipulating others: at roughly 10 years old, before she got on the train, she easily sowed discord among her ballet classmates with:

> “You know Sheena…you were right. Chloe shouldn’t smile until her parents can afford to give her braces.“

Grace is not simply a liar, however: she is also, to put it plainly, fake. She’s something of a social chameleon, but rather than drastically changing her presentation to fit in, she dons a fabricated, friendly and encouraging persona to make others “fit” her own desires.  
She even has variants of her persona for different audiences. She sounds like a friendly “cool kid” to 15-year-old Jesse, claiming he was a “natural” on his first raid although he only halfheartedly kicked a cube. She acts like an adoring parent to the younger Apex kids, squatting to the level of shorter Apex children, praising their offerings, and telling them she’ll keep the offerings someplace special. To Hazel (and Tuba) she acts like a kindergarten teacher at the first day of school, simultaneously making Hazel excited about The Apex and acting assuring to Tuba.

The most striking evidence for Grace’s lying social-chameleon-esque acts is how much her mannerisms and very voice change when addressing the Apex kids and Jesse compared to addressing Simon. In the first and second episode, she feels open to banter and bicker with Simon, such as exchanging unflattering nicknames or saying she doesn’t want his “ripeness” (body odor) giving away their position; she treats no one else as a friend like this.

Grace is not simply an insincere “queen bee” highschooler-type, either. As Uncivilized Elk has pointed out in “Cult Recruitment in "The Mall Car” – Infinity Train Analysis & Review” ( **warning; profanity** ), intentionally or not Grace’s tactics with Jesse show a step-by-step plan to indoctrinate Jesse into the Apex’s worldview. She praises Jesse and acts as if she cares about him, but is only manipulating him to a particular end. For example, when Jesse thinks the candy tastes bad, she convinces him to throw it to the wheels of the train, telling him he can “do what he wants”. However, this is almost certainly a precursor to making Jesse accept “wheeling” (killing by throwing them to the train’s wheels) denizens.  
Furthermore, in “The Jungle Car” she misdirects Hazel on who’s to blame for an unpopular decision, minimizes it (saying Simon was “confused”) and “resolves” the problem almost immediately: very suspicious abuser or cult-like behavior.

Initially, she engages in cognitive empathy (internal emulation of the emotional states of others) without really caring about others, to figure out how people work and so manipulate them. She has a utilitarian sort of approach, changing her persona to make others do what she wants and change them.  
To be fair, it’s possible not all of her kindness and empathy is faked. When Jesse took his exit, Simon calls him “weak”, but Grace says he wasn’t weak, but misled, and says: “We just lost another human, Simon. Show some respect.” Still, she’s certainly not sincere, overall. For example, despite teaching him he can “do what he wants”, when what Jesse wants goes against The Apex, Grace and Simon immediately try to stop him.

However, over time, Grace’s temporary, utilitarian approach of altering personas to her goal makes her "become the mask”. She eventually finds it hard to justify her continued kind and compassionate acts to Hazel in relation to her Apex worldviews, and the contradiction causes her distress.

## Simon Analysis

Simon, in contrast, lies much less than Grace and is more open about how he feels, especially in his disdain for Denizens. While he initially seems friendly, when Jesse’s off on a raid he has no patience with MT’s concerns and outright tells her to “get out of here before Jesse gets back. You can’t help him like we can.” (Possible: it didn’t occur to him that Jesse might still trust Lake, so being too mean to Lake would come back to bite him.) He is also more open about his disdain for nulls around Hazel, though it would clearly benefit him to tone it down before they can “ditch” Tuba.

Two of Simon’s more important deceptions are notably half-truths, not outright claims. He claims MT broke Todd’s ankle, which is technically true: Todd kicked MT’s metal body and in the process broke his ankle. Arguably, him saying “no one knows” where the passengers go is him honestly saying he doesn’t know exactly where they go; how could he know Jesse Cosay’s home was in Arizona, and which specific location?  
Indeed, sometimes he does not lie even would it be very practical to do so. For example, although acting as if he “couldn’t save her in time” and pretending to be deeply unsettled by Tuba’s death would have gotten rid of Tuba and not put Hazel’s cooperation into question, he outright tells Hazel he wheeled her. His attempt to comfort her about “never hav[ing] to worry about that null again” could suggest obliviousness to the viewpoints of others, but it could also be his version of trustworthy, straightforward honesty, in accordance with his own beliefs.

It’s important to note that, though Simon is more honest than Grace, he still lies, deceives, and manipulates others. The difference between them is finesse, speed, and frequency. Though Simon may think of Grace as his plaything, or come to think of her as such, it’s Grace who’s effective at making others her playthings, by manipulating her social presentation like a social chameleon.

## Root Causes

Arguably, both Grace and Simon do not treat people as means in themselves, but means to an end: in essence, other passengers are treated as tools for their own goals. It’s interesting to see how much Grace and Simon treat Apex members (and each other) like they treat nulls: that they are “only good as they are useful”. When they stop being “useful”, in the sense of helping the Apex or each other according to plan, they eventually become aggressive. Admittedly, the change to aggression is slower and more complicated for Simon to Grace in Season 3; Simon’s end goal for Grace could easily have been “comfort and companionship”, which friends naturally give anyway.

Grace emphasizes Jesse’s ability to choose for himself, but when Jesse’s decision strays from The Apex’s values and Grace’s plans, she doesn’t let him go with a “you’re missing out, buddy” lamentation. Instead, she says: “I wanted to go for the easy way, but you made it hard” and shows the Flecs where Lake is, presumably so they can do the dirty work for them. Jesse has value to Grace as an Apex member, one under her control, and not in any other sense.  
Grace’s logic for showing Lake to the Flecs parallels Simon’s actions in trapping Grace in her own memory tape; he says “you made me do this”. The Cat outright says Simon treats Grace as an object with: “and how should she be acting? She’s not like one of your toys.”

Grace Monroe is a liar, and much more so than Simon. And it’s because she is, in the words of the Memory Tape’s Hazel, a “coward leading cowards”. Grace’s lying comes from her fear: her fear of being wrong, of not being enough, of being alone. Her kindness to the Apex kids, faked or superficial as it may be, probably comes from the desire to give them what her parents would not.  
Adding onto her cowardice and fears, she initially hid her dropping number from Simon in “The Chat Chalet Car” because she “ didn’t want the Apex…or you…to see me like this…and think less of me.“ Though her fear Simon would think less of her for it was unfounded, as Simon sincerely supported her then, afterwards she hid her number from Simon. She “cut him out” (in Simon’s words) from her lack of courage to be open and honest. As Memory-Hazel points out, when Grace had the “chance to make it right”, by revealing she knew about Hazel’s condition when it was obvious she was a turtle, she did not.

## Conclusion

Grace and Simon’s are both villain protagonists messed up by unresolved trauma and eight years of being on the train with no guidance whatsoever. One starts off slightly worse than the other, only to get much better discard her animus for nulls. One starts off slightly better, only to get much worse and expand his animus for nulls to humans as well: his former best (and only) friend, at that. It’s the tiny differences in how they relate to others and operate that cause their slightly different moral starting points and massively different end points.

**Author's Note:**

> The author enjoys comments. Feel free to comment, either here or on the author's [Tumblr](https://argentdandelion.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Related work:  
> [Should Simon Have Friend-Dumped Grace?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27395545/chapters/66955246).


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